Method for uniformizing and eliminating speckles of optical fiber output laser
Technical Field
The invention relates to a method for uniformizing and eliminating speckles of laser output by an optical fiber, belonging to the technical field of laser application.
Background
Laser light is widely used as a light source with high brightness, good monochromaticity and good directivity. The optical fiber output laser chip has sealed and ultra-clean working environment and prolonged service life, provides a soft client for optical fiber output, and is convenient and flexible to use. However, since the light emitted by the laser is coupled to the multimode fiber and transmitted through the multimode fiber to form a plurality of modes for output, the output light is not a uniform light beam, which is usually circular, spiral or asymmetric, and interference between the modes also exists, resulting in the formation of speckle. When the optical fiber is used for illumination, the display effect of a detection end is seriously influenced by the nonuniformity of an optical field output by the optical fiber and interference speckles, and the image quality in a laser display system is also directly influenced.
Some existing systems for homogenizing a light field are very complex and have high cost, for example, chinese patent document CN102169239A discloses a speckle image scrambling in a laser projection system, and provides a laser projection system, which includes a light source, a phase delay element and a beam scanning element. The light source comprises at least one frequency-converted laser source comprising a wavelength tunable laser diode and a wavelength conversion device. The phase delay element is configured to decompose the polarization of the frequency converted laser beam into two orthogonal linearly polarized components to phase lag one polarization component relative to the other. The frequency converted laser beam polarization within the 2D image frame is a function of the degree to which the polarization components lag with respect to each other and varies with wavelength variations in the output of the wavelength tunable laser diode. The polarization change of the frequency-converted laser beam in the 2D image frame is sufficient to scramble the image speckle pattern across the 2D image frame. However, the system is not compact enough, has many components and is poor in reliability.
Chinese patent document CN102081235A discloses a method for homogenizing, depolarizing and decoherence of optical signals transmitted in multimode optical fiber, which comprises placing the optical fiber in the liquid of an ultrasonic oscillator to homogenize the light spots, winding the optical fiber in the optical fiber limit ring in the oscillator, and using water as the liquid. The device is relatively simple, but is inconvenient to use due to the existence of liquid, and the ultrasonic oscillator needs to be additionally provided with a high-voltage high-frequency power supply, so that the volume and the cost of the whole system are increased.
Chinese patent document CN201285473A discloses a scattering-based decoherence shimming apparatus, which includes a hollow waveguide and a scattering medium, wherein the scattering medium splits the laser beam and homogenizes the laser beam by using the light mixing effect of the waveguide during the propagation process of the laser beam in the scattering medium. The device is relatively simple, but the efficiency is not high due to the absorption loss of the scattering medium and the waveguide reflecting layer, and the loss of optical power is large.
U.S. patents 6532244, 6810175, etc. describe methods of coiling or applying distributed stress to a length of multimode optical fiber, supplemented by off-axis coupling, and butting fibers of different diameters. However, these methods are not simple and convenient to implement, require a large-sized device and a sufficiently long optical fiber, are inconvenient to install and adjust, and are difficult to ensure consistency during batch production. Chinese patent document CN101630045A provides a device for improving the spatial distribution of the output beam of a multimode optical fiber, which changes the spatial distribution of the output beam by applying stress to the optical fiber, including applying external stress of single-point, multi-point or continuous distribution to a short length of the multimode optical fiber for transmitting laser, the method is simple and convenient, has obvious effect on the circular helical fringe in the light spot, but the method has no effect on the interference speckle in the light field, and can seriously affect the imaging quality during lighting and displaying.
Disclosure of Invention
Aiming at the problems of nonuniformity and interference speckles of an optical fiber output light field in the prior art, the invention provides a method for homogenizing and eliminating speckles of optical fiber output laser, which can simultaneously achieve the effects of homogenizing and eliminating speckles of light spots and meet the high-quality requirement of taking the optical fiber output laser as a light source.
Interpretation of terms:
numerical aperture: the constant of the fiber, which is related to the maximum aperture of the output light from the fiber, is a way to define the divergence angle. Light incident on the end face of an optical fiber is not transmitted entirely by the optical fiber, but only light incident within a certain angle range. The sine of this angle α is referred to as the numerical aperture (NA ═ sin α) of the fiber.
Fiber core diameter/cladding: the diameter of the core and the diameter of the outer cladding are shown, for example, the core/cladding diameter is 400/440 microns, which means that the core diameter is 400 microns and the cladding diameter is 440 microns.
The technical scheme of the invention is as follows:
a method for uniformizing and eliminating speckles of optical fiber output laser comprises the following steps of coarsening the optical fiber output end face or the optical fiber end cap output face of an optical fiber output laser:
(1) cleaning of
Cleaning the output end face of the optical fiber to remove the surface dirt; fixing the optical fiber in the ferrule of the optical fiber output laser connector, wherein the end face of the optical fiber output is flush with the end face of the ferrule; or,
welding an optical fiber end cap at the output end of the optical fiber, cleaning the output surface of the optical fiber end cap, and removing dirt on the surface of the output surface;
(2) coarsening
Suspending and immersing an optical fiber output end face in the ferrule or an optical fiber end cap output face into a corrosive liquid for 2-20 min; the corrosive liquid is formed by mixing HF and water in a volume ratio of 1: 5-20; the output end face of the obtained optical fiber is changed from a smooth plane into a roughened surface; taking out the optical fiber in the insertion core, and washing the output end face of the optical fiber by deionized water;
(3) and after the optical fiber in the ferrule is subjected to roughening treatment or the welded optical fiber end cap is subjected to roughening treatment, electrifying the laser, observing light spots and obtaining homogenized output laser.
According to the invention, the roughening treatment in the step (2) is preferably to immerse the ferrule fixed with the optical fiber into the corrosive liquid for 3-6mm depth; or the optical fiber end cap welded at the output end of the optical fiber is immersed into the corrosive liquid for 3-6 mm.
According to the invention, the optical fiber or the optical fiber end cap material is preferably a quartz material. The quartz material is subjected to the action of HF acid, so that the end surface is roughened (as shown in figure 2), and the propagation path is changed from original directivity to disorder; the output light of the end face is refracted at different angles, so that the limitation of an optical fiber mode field on the light formation is broken, and the homogenization of light spots is realized.
The homogenized laser beam obtained by the method of the invention has no dark center, no light ring and no flashlight phenomenon (as shown in figure 5 b).
Preferably, the optical fiber has a length of 20-60cm, a core diameter/cladding of 400/440 microns and a numerical aperture of 0.22.
Preferably, according to the invention, the optical fiber end cap has a length of 5-20mm and a diameter of 1.5-5 mm. The length and the diameter of the optical fiber end cap are in proportion to ensure that light is not output from the side face of the optical fiber end cap, and the material of the optical fiber end cap is generally selected from quartz or glass and other media with high light transmittance.
According to the invention, the output wavelength of the optical fiber output laser is 780-980 nm.
The principle of the invention is as follows:
coarsening is carried out on the output end face of the optical fiber, so that the light beam transmission path which is transmitted strictly according to the mode field in the optical fiber is changed at the end face, the output light passes through the emergent faces with different angles at the end face to be refracted with different angles, the limitation of the optical fiber mode field on the light formation is broken, and the homogenization of light spots is realized. And the method simultaneously realizes the change of the optical path, the light is output through different surfaces, the optical path is different, the speckle caused by interference can be reduced, and the homogenization of the light spots is further realized.
Fig. 3 is a schematic diagram of transmission of light in an optical fiber without coarsening the end face of the optical fiber, where the transmission of light in the optical fiber is affected by the internal mode of the optical fiber according to the law of total reflection, and the light is sequentially output according to the internal mode of the optical fiber, resulting in orderly output light spots and forming ordered patterns such as a ring star-shaped graph, as shown in fig. 5 b.
Fig. 4 is a schematic diagram of roughened end surfaces of optical fibers and transmission of light in the optical fibers, the transmission of light in the optical fibers is affected by internal modes of the optical fibers according to a total reflection rule, the roughened end surfaces of the optical fibers are distinguished from those formed without roughening, and the roughened light disturbs original ordered output to form wide-angle disordered output, as shown in fig. 5 a. A uniform wide angle output of light is formed through this roughening step.
The invention is suitable for homogenizing light spots of a multimode fiber output laser, and the homogenizing effect is better when the diameter size of the optical fiber is larger. The optical fiber is welded on the glass optical fiber cap, and the end face of the optical fiber cap is roughened, so that the effect is better.
The method is simple, has low cost, and is suitable for application fields using the optical fiber output laser as a light source, such as laser night vision, security protection, laser projection and the like.
Drawings
FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of an end face of an optical fiber before roughening in a ferrule;
FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram of the end face of a roughened optical fiber in the ferrule;
FIG. 3 is a schematic diagram of an end face of a light output fiber before roughening;
FIG. 4 is a schematic diagram of an end face of a roughened light output fiber;
FIG. 5 is a schematic diagram showing the change of laser spots output by the laser fiber before and after roughening the fiber end surface. FIG. 5a is a schematic diagram of a light spot of laser output by a laser fiber before roughening the end surface of the fiber; FIG. 5b is a schematic diagram of the laser spot output by the laser fiber after the fiber end surface is roughened.
Fig. 6 is a schematic view of a fiber output end fused to a fiber end cap.
In the figure: 1. an optical fiber; 2. inserting a core; 3. coarsening the end face of the optical fiber; 4. light rays; 5. coarsening the end face of the front optical fiber; 6. an optical fiber end cap.
Detailed Description
The present invention is further described below with reference to the following drawings and examples, but is not limited thereto.
Example 1: a method for uniformizing and eliminating speckles of laser output by an optical fiber comprises the following steps:
(1) the optical fiber output laser comprises a 2W optical fiber output laser, wherein an optical fiber made of quartz materials is fixed in an optical fiber output laser connector ferrule, and the output end face of the optical fiber is flush with the end face of the ferrule; the length of the optical fiber is 20cm, generally, the shorter the optical fiber is, the more serious the light is influenced by the internal mode of the optical fiber, the diameter of the optical fiber is 400/440, the numerical aperture is 0.22, the output wavelength is 808nm, and the anode and the cathode are electrified to be 2A to observe light spots; the light spots are affected by the internal mode of the multimode optical fiber, and are not uniformly distributed in space, so that the phenomena of dark center and electric torch appear, as shown in fig. 5 a;
and turning off the power supply, taking out and cleaning the output end face of the optical fiber, and removing the surface dirt. As shown in fig. 1, the optical fiber 1 is located in the ferrule 2 and is an unarchased optical fiber end face, at this time, the end face of the optical fiber 1 is flush with the end face of the ferrule, the output surface is smooth, and about 0.05 micron polishing occurs;
(2) preparing a mixture with a volume ratio of 1: 10 HF and water mixed corrosive liquid;
suspending the output end face of the optical fiber positioned in the ferrule in prepared corrosive liquid, immersing the ferrule into the liquid level for 6mm, corroding for 10min and taking out; the optical fiber material is quartz, and the surface of the optical fiber output end face is roughened under the action of HF acid, as shown in figure 2, the optical fiber end face 3 is the surface after corrosion;
and washing the output end face of the optical fiber by using deionized water. In the whole process of the step, the solution is prevented from being corroded and damaged;
the microstructure of the end face of the optical fiber is shown in figure 4, the surface is roughened, and the propagation path is changed from original directivity to disorder;
(3) and electrifying the anode and the cathode of the laser by 2A, and observing light spots. The spot changes from that shown in figure 5a to that shown in figure 5 b; and obtaining the homogenized output laser.
Example 2:
the optical fiber output laser is not provided with a connector, and bare optical fibers are output. The output end of the optical fiber 1 is welded to an optical fiber end cap 6, the optical fiber end cap 6 is a quartz column with the diameter larger than that of the optical fiber, one end of the optical fiber end cap 6 with the diameter of 1.8mm is welded to the optical fiber 1, the other end of the optical fiber end cap is well ground, and the length of the optical fiber end cap 6 is 8 mm. As shown in fig. 6.
(1) Cleaning the output surface of the optical fiber end cap 6 to remove surface dirt;
(2) preparing a corrosive liquid according to a volume ratio of 1: 10 HF and water; suspending the optical fiber end cap in a prepared solution, immersing the optical fiber end cap in a corrosive solution for 3mm deep below the liquid level, corroding for 10min, and taking out the optical fiber end cap; the optical fiber end cap is made of quartz, and the surface of the optical fiber end cap is roughened under the action of HF acid; washing the optical fiber end cap with deionized water, and paying attention to the corrosion damage of the solution to human bodies in the whole process of contacting the solution; the microstructure of the end face of the optical fiber is shown in figure 4, the surface is roughened, and the propagation path is changed from original directivity to disorder;
(3) the laser anode and cathode are electrified 2A to observe the light spot, as shown in figure 5 b. And obtaining the homogenized output laser.